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DISCOURSE 

OF 

REV. JOHN McCLINTOCK, D.D., LL.D., 

UPON THE DEATH OF 

PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL 
or 

President Lincoln, 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1865, 

In St. Paul's Church, New York, 

BY 

JOHN McCLINTOCK, DD. LLD. 



REPORTED BY J. T. BUTTS 



NEW YORK: VW^'^'.-^'^r 



Press of J. M. Bradstreet &''^S^'. '"-'-•' 
I 865. 



^^ 7(^./'P^^' 



E 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, 

BY BOWLES COLGATE, 

In the Clerk's Office of tlie District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New 
York ; in behalf of the Young Men's Christian Association of St. Paul's M. E. Church. 



i- 



New York, jipril zo, 1865. 
The Rev. John McClintock, D. D., 
Dear Sir : 

Having listened to your Discourse yesterday, upon 
the sad event of the death of our late President, and fully sym- 
pathizing with the sentiments of the discourse, we, the Commit- 
tee, in behalf of the Young Men's Christian Association of St. 
Paul's M. E. Church, respectfully solicit a copy for the press, 
believing that its circulation in a permanent form will subserve 
the interest of justice and freedom. 

We are, truly yours, 

Bowles Colgate, Chairman. 

A. E. M. PURDY. 

E. Frank. Hyde. 
L. Bolton Bancs. 



New York, Jpril 21, 1865. 
Gentlemen : 

The Discourse was delivered extempore. As I am 
just about to leave town, it is impossible for me to write it 
out ; but one of the reporters for the daily press, Mr. Butts, 
has sent me his notes, which, though not taken with a view to 
publication, are yet tolerably ample. I have hastily revised 
them, and herewith submit them to you. 

Very truly, 

J. McClintock. 



DISCOURSE. 



Heb. xiii. 7. — Remember them which have the rule over you, 

faith follow. 



ifhose 



It is the Lord ; His will be done. The blow 
has stunned the nation. Had we no trust in 
Him who conquers even the last enemy, the "vic- 
tory of the grave" which calls us together to-day 
would fill us with despair. And even with all 
the light which the word of God affords, and with 
all the strength which our faith in God gives us, 
we can still only say, "His way is in the sea, and 
His path in the deep waters." We shall know 
hereafter what He doeth ; but we know not now. 

" Remember^' says our text, and '■^follow." 



There is little fear of our forgetting — there is 
little fear of the world forgetting the name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. It was the remark of Heine, the 
German poet and satirist, that " men preserve the 
memory of their destroyers better than that of their 
benefactors ; the warrior's name outlasts the phi- 
lanthropist's." There is some truth in this, taking 
the world's history as it has been. But it is one of 
the best signs of the times that men's hearts are more 
than ever attracted by moral greatness, and that all 
laurels are not stained with blood. The day is 
dawning, even though its rising sun be dimmed by 
clouds, and struggles up amid gloom, and tears, 
and blood, in which the glory of the reformer shall 
outshine that of the conqueror — in which the 

Saints of humanity, strong, yet tender. 
Making the present hopeful with their life, 

shall be held the true heroes in men's thoughts, as 
they are the true heroes in the progress of humani- 
ty, and before the eye of God. And to this heroic 
class belongs the name of Abraham Lincoln, who 
fell, if ever man did, fighting the battles of hu- 
manity. 



L 



9 

A voice came to us ten days ago from beyond 
the sea. Here is what it says of Abraham Lincoln: 
"When the heats of party passion and international 
jealousy have abated, when detraction has spent its 
malice, and the scandalous gossip of the day goes 
the way of all lies, the place of Abraham Lincoln 
in the grateful affection of his countrymen and in 
the respect of mankind, will be second only, if it be 
second, to that of Washington himself." When 
Robert ^Cairnes penned those prophetic words, 
how little did he dream that in a few weeks his 
prediction should become history! "When the 
heats of party passion are abated !" A work 
of long and weary time, no doubt. Yet it has 
been done in a day. The fame of Abraham Lin- 
coln has not had to wait for the revolving years 
to set it right. The bullet of the assassin has done 
the work of an age. To-day that name stands as 
high before this whole people, of all parties, of all 
sects, of all classes, as it would have stood in a half 
a century, had the blow of the assassin never fallen. 
Party spirit, for the time at least, is dead. Who 
thinks of party now? There are doubtless, in this 
congregation, many men who voted against Abra- 



TO 



h:im l.iiu-olii; is there one of them who does not 
ini>urn him to thiv r When vmi hc:u\i th;it Abraham 
l.uKohi was dead — vou, who a year ago, perhaps, 
made his name an object ot abuse and caUimnv ; \ou, 
whose lips were accustomed to speak ot that bra\e, 
noble, KniuL!; nian as a usurper, perhaps, or at least 
as a foolish imbecile, and an unfit tet\ant ot the 
highest place in all the world — 1 ask vou, when 
vou heard on Saturdav moriuno; that Lincoln was 
dead, did not vour heart throb as never betore; did 
not vour throat become huskv and the damp gather 
in Nour eves, in spite ot vou, as vou spoke ot it ? 
Partv spirit tor the moment is indeed forgotten. Do 
not forget the lesson ; and when vour party journals 
beo.in, as thev will bec;in verv soon, to assail Andrew 
Johnson, as thev have in the past assailed Abraham 
Lincoln, do not be led awav; let not opposition 
he sullied with calumny or embittered by hate. 

The streets of the city of' New York, and ot' every 
city in the LTnion, from Portland to San Francisco, 
are clad in mourning. I have been struck, in 
o;oinfx through the poorer streets of this city, 
to find the emblems of sorrow more general, if 
possible, on the abodes of the humble and the 



II 



lowly, than on the stately dwellings of the rich in 
the grand avenues. All over this land, and over 
all the civilized world, I dare say, there shall be 
grief and mourning in the hearts and homes of 
those who are called the " common people" — of 
whom was Abraham Lincoln. The "ruling classes" 
abroad will grieve also, but for a very different rea- 
son. The Tories and aristocrats of England have 
watched, with fear and wrath, the later progress of 
the Republic towards triumph ; and they will feel 
the tremor of a new fear when they learn that 
this good and generous man — so tender, so mer- 
ciful, so forgiving, so full of all peaceful thoughts, 
that revenge or cruelty could find no place in 
his heart ; this noble, steadfast man of the peo- 
ple, at whose feet all their taunts and gibes had 
fallen harmless, whose simple dignity of nature 
achieved for him that serene indifference, that high 
superiority to abuse and calumny which have been 
claimed as the peculiar attributes of what are called 
high birth and breeding — has passed away from earth. 
For they were just learning that he loved peace next 
to justice, and, in the vague terror of their conscious 
guilt, as abettors of the slaveholders' rebellion, they 



12 



looked to the gentle ruler, whom they had so 
vilely traduced, to avert the war which their con- 
sciences told them ought to come. 

But while, for this reason, there will be real grief 
among the ruling classes, there shall be sorrow of an- 
other sort among all the liberal hearts, among all who 
have hoped and struggled for the future equality of 
the race, and who, these four weary years, have been 
watching the issues of our great war for freedom, 
with an intensity of feeling only next to our own. 
As for the working classes, everywhere through the 
British islands, and on the continent of Europe, the 
name of Abraham Lincoln had come to be, for them, 
the synonyme of hope for their cause ; for 

Love had he found in huts, where poor men lie, 

not only in every slave cabin in the South, where 
he is canonized already, but in many a shepherd's 
lodge of Switzerland — in many a woodman's cabin 
of the Black Forest — in many a miner's hut of the 
Hartz Mountains — in many a cottage in Italy, 
for there, as well as here, the poor had learned to 
look upon him as the anointed of God for the 
redemption of the liberties of mankind. It is 



13 

but lately that Garibaldi named one of his grand- 
children Lincoln, little dreaming how soon that 
name was to be enrolled among the immortals. Oh ! 
how his great heart will throb, how the tears will I 
roll like bullets down his seamed and furrowed 
face, when to him shall come the sad message, 
" Lincoln is dead !" 

And now let us ask why all this sorrow ? 
Whence this universal love ? Certainly it was not 
intellectual grandeur that so drew all hearts toward 
Lincoln. And yet I do not sympathize with much 
that has been said in disparagement of his intellect, 
although mere mental gifts, of the highest order, 
might well have been eclipsed, in the popular esti- 
mation, by the sublimity of that moral power which 
overshadowed all his other qualities. But it is stu- 
pid to talk of him as a man of mean intellect. 
He had a giant's work to do, and he has done it 
nobly. Called upon to steer the ship of state 
through the mightiest and most rapid tide of events 
that ever swept over a nation, he guided her safely, 
and was within sight of the harbor, when he was 
struck down at the helm. Even in his speeches and 
writings, where defects of form reveal the want of 



14 

early culture and give room for the carping of petty 
critics who can see no farther than the torm, I do 
not fear to say that the calm criticism of history 
will find marks of the highest power of mind. Do 
you remember his little speech over the graves of 
our martyrs at Gettysburg ? I remember the thrill 
with which I read it, across the sea. It is Greek- 
like in its simple majesty of thought, and even in 
the exquisite felicity of some of its phrases. Nor 
could that have been a mean intellect which enabled 
this simple son of the people, standing among men 
who piqued themselves upon their refinement and 
culture, among men of large acquirements and pol- 
ished speech, to hold on his own way among them, 
to take or reject their advice, to hear all plans and 
all arguments, and after all to be the real ruler of 
the nation and of the times. With such gifts as 
God gave him, he was enabled to pierce to the very 
core of a matter, while others, with their fine rhe- 
toric, could only talk around it. 

Yet it was not for the intellect, but for the moral 
qualities of the man that we loved him It is a 
wise order of Providence that it is so that men are 
drawn. We never love cold intellect. We may 



15 

admire it ; we may wonder at it ; sometimes we 
may even worship it, but we never love it. The 
hearts of men leap out only after the image of God 
in man, and the image of God in man is love. Oh ! 
what a large and loving heart was stilled last Fri- 
day ! How line, how tender, how all-embracing 
was his love of that old man ! Those of you who 
have never seen him, and never have known the 
inexpressible charm of his simple manner, can nev- 
er understand how much there was in him to love. 
Men of all classes were alike won by his personal 
magnetism. Those who have traduced him most, 
and those who have been most carried away by the 
blind fury of partisan hate, and have gone to Wash- 
ington to see him, have always come away disarmed. 
Whenever they had talk with the President, when- 
ever those tender eyes opened gently upon them, 
(they had the habit of opening gently,) and they 
looked through those portals of his soul and saw 
the infinite wealth of tenderness that was there, 
they yielded to the spell. Illustrations of the 
tenderness of his nature abound. A colonel 
in the army was telling a friend the other 
day, of a time in 1862, when he had command of 



i6 



one of the posts, and the President visited the 
place for a few days. This officer had never met 
the President, and had no very exalted opinion of 
him, " but at the end of those ten days," said he, 
" I found that I was in love with him, and I could 
not help it." He related an incident that took 
place one evening while sitting alone with the Pres- 
ident, Mr. Lincoln was reading Shakspeare, when 
suddenly turning his eyes upon the officer, he said : 
" Colonel, do you ever find yourself talking with 
a dead friend as if he was present and still living ?" 
" Yes," said the colonel, " I know the feeling, for 
it has occurred to me often." '* I am glad I asked 
you the question," said Mr. Lincoln, closing his 
book and leaning his head upon his hand, *' I did 
not know that it was common, but ever since my 
little boy died, I find myself talking with him 
every day." 

The entire absence of vindictiveness, either per- 
sonal or political, was one of the ripe fruits of 
Lincoln's native tenderness. Did you ever hear 
of his saying a hard thing of his opponents ? After 
all the vile calumnies heaped upon him at home 
and abroad, did you ever know him to utter a 



I? 

single word showing personal hate, or even personal 
feeling? It is a marvellous record. Test our pub- 
lic men by this standard, and you will see how 
loftily he towers above them in moral dignity. 
He lived as he died : the last of his public utter- 
ances closed with the words, "With malice towards 
none, with charity for all." This phrase will fall 
hereafter into that small number of phrases, not 
Scripture, but which men often cite, unwittingly, 
as though they were. 

Another striking element of his moral nature 
was his profound faith — a faith not like that of the 
man who now stands at the head of the French 
people, a blind fatalistic confidence in his own 
destiny, or in the destiny of the system with which 
he is identified. Nor yet merely an uncalculating 
faith in the wisdom, virtue or steadfastness of the 
American people. Abraham Lincoln had this, in- 
deed ; but it was not all : he had a profound reli- 
gious faith : not simply a general recognition of the 
law of order in the universe, but a profound faith 
in a Personal God. He once remarked to me, at a 
sudden turn in conversation, " Ah, Providence is 
stronger than you or I," and he said it in such a 



tone as to reveal a habit of thought. It was 
out of the abundance of the heart that the 
mouth spoke. We were discussing at the time 
the relations of this country with Europe, and 
the effects of his Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion. " When I issued that Proclamation," 
said he, " I was in great doubt about it my- 
self I did not think that the people had been 
quite educated up to it, and I feared its effect upon 
the Border States, yet I think it was right; I knew 
it would help our cause in Europe, and I trusted 
in God and did it." I believe that no president 
since George Washington ever brought in so em- 
inent a degree to his official work a deep religious 
faith. Of his personal religious experience I can- 
not speak of my own knowledge, but we have 
more than one cheering testimony about it. I 
have been assured that ever after the battle of Get- 
tysburgh he was daily in the habit of suppli- 
cating in prayer the throne of divine grace, as a 
believer in Jesus Christ, and that from that time 
he classed himself with believers. Oh! what pray- 
ers those must have been in the dark days of '63, 
and how wondrously has God answered them. 



19 

I shall not speak of the patriotism of Abraham 
Lincoln, though it is one of the points of which I 
had intended to speak, but you know all about it. 
You know what a tremendous duty fell to him, 
and how he did it all the way through ; seduced by 
no blandishment, frightened by no threats from the 
steady pursuit of his one duty — to restore the in- 
tegrity of the government. How far he succeeded 
is known to you all. The "forts and places" 
which he said he would retake are all ours to-day, 
and the main army of the rebellion is scattered and 
gone ! 

The manners of Abraham Lincoln have been a mat- 
ter of a great deal of comment, and of snobbish com- 
ment too. If unaffected simplicity, the most entire 
ease, and the power to put one's visitor at ease, 
and to do it unconsciously; if these are the ultimate 
results and the final tests of refinement, as they 
unquestionably are, then was he the peer of any 
nobleman in manners. When you shall learn to be 
as easy, as gentle, as truly unaffected, as free from 
all thought of yourself, as Abraham Lincoln was, 
then indeed will you have finished manners. What 
if there were a few accidental remnants of his 



20 



former habits ? Of all people in the world, we are 
the very last that should think of these. 

Just now, across the sea, men are grieving over 
the death of a plain man of the people, like Abra- 
ham Lincoln, a man of the same kind of man- 
ners, a man bred to the plough, and whose early 
years were given to trade — Richard Cobden. And 
not merely in naturalness of manners, but also in 
moral elevation, in guileless sincerity, in delicate 
regard for the feelings even of enemies, in true 
devotion to the good of their fellow-men, espe- 
cially to the cause of the poor and oppressed, and 
in earnest religious faith, were these men twin- 
brothers. Even in outward look there was a marked 
resemblance ; the same tenderness of eye, the same 
pathetic sadness of general expression, and the 
same lurking smile of humor. 

In two weeks after the fall of Sumter, I heard the 
news of it in Paris. Cobden arrived in town, from 
Algiers, I think, just then. Early the next morn- 
ing I went to him, and said, " Are you enough in- 
terested in the American question to have a few 
words?" "Interested!" said he, "interested!" 
and the tears started to his eyes. " My God ! 



21 

sir, I do not sleep at night!" We then talked 
over all the probable phases of this great question 
and its tremendous issues. Never, until I came 
home and sat down alone with Abraham Lincoln, 
as I had sat down with Richard Cobden, did I 
know how much alike these two men were. How 
prophetic is it of the near coming of the time 
when all the sophisms of power by which a few 
have held, and are still striving to hold, the mass 
of mankind in their iron grasp to make them the 
tools of their ambition and their avarice, shall 
be swept away forever, that, all over the earth, 
in palaces as well as in hovels, there is mourn- 
ing over Richard Cobden and Abraham Lincoln; 
men that worked with their hands and yet raised 
themselves higher than nobles; precursors of that 
triumphant Christian civilization that is yet to 
gladden the hearts of all mankind with the 
reign of universal brotherhood. In seven years 
Cobden bowed the neck of the proudest aristoc- 
racy in the world. In five years Lincoln de- 
stroyed and buried the most cruel, the most dan- 
gerous aristocracy that ever sought to establish 
itself in a civilized nation. The two representa- 






22 



tive men of the spirit of the age have passed away 
from earth together. 

We had no fear about Abraham Lincoln, except 
the fear that he would be too forgiving. Oh ! 
what an epitaph — that the only fear men had was 
that he would be too tender, that he had too much 
love ; in a word, that he was too Christ-like ! 
And how Christ-like was he in dying! His last 
official words in substance were, " Father, forgive 
them, they know not what they do." And on 
Good Friday he fell a martyr to the cause of 
humanity. I do not think there was adequate 
ground for the fear that he would ever have sacri- 
ficed substantial justice upon the altar of his per- 
sonal tenderness ; or, that he had not the strength 
and the resolution to punish the authors of the re- 
bellion ; yet, after all, in coming ages, it shall no 
be the least of his titles to the veneration and love 
of mankind, that his compeers found no fault with 
him, except that he had too much love. 

Last Friday, we are told. President Lincoln 
asked General Grant if he had heard from Gen- 
eral Sherman ? General Grant replied that he 
had not; but that he was hourly in expectation 



23 

of receiving dispatches announcing the surrender 
of Johnston. "Well," said the President, "you 
will hear very soon now, and the news will be 
important." " Why do you think so ?" said the 
General. " Because," said Mr. Lincoln, " I had a 
dream last night, and ever since the war began I 
have invariably had the same dream before any 
important event has occurred." He then in- 
stanced Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburgh, &c., and 
said that before each of those events he had had 
the same dream. Turning to Secretary Welles, 
he said: " It is in your line, too, Mr. Welles. I 
dreamed that I saw a ship sailing very rapidly by, 
and I am sure that it portends some important na- 
tional event." Dear friends, the life of Abraham 
Lincoln is closed. After a very, very stormy 
voyage, the ship has reached her harbor at last. 
And how, after all these tempests, these fierce 
blasts, these rising floods, how did the ship sail 
in ? Shattered and sinking, with sails all torn and 
rent ? No, dear friends, God ordered it otherwise. 
Not a mark of the storm was on the noble vessel ; 
the hull was sound, the spars were strong, the sails 
were spread, with the broad flag flying again as it 



24 

never waved before, and with pennants of red, white 
and blue streaming gloriously and triumphantly 
over all, the ship sailed into port, and the angels 
of God said their glad "All hail !" So now say 
I — and I venture to speak in your behalf, as well as 
in my own — Abraham Lincoln, Patriot, Philan- 
thropist, Christian, Martyr, Hail ! and Farewell ! 

And now, what are to be the results of this 
tragedy to the country and to mankind ? It is 
God that rules, and already we see that, even in 
this terrible crime. He has made the wrath of man 
to praise Him. One thing is clear: even now the 
American people are united as they were never 
united before. Four years ago (or it will be four 
years within a week), in 1861, I stood in Exeter 
Hall, in the City of London, with an audience of 
nearly four thousand people. The London 'Times 
of the day before had said " the great Republic is 
gone." I made these words the text of a little 
speech to these four thousand Englishmen. I ven- 
tured to say to them, what in my heart I believed 
to be true, that whatever might be the result of civil 
war elsewhere, and however a single battle might 
turn in the United States, the Government of the 



25 

United States was impregnable ; that the great 
Republic would come forth out of the trial stronger 
than ever ; that however the first battle might go, 
we should win the last, and the Rebellion would 
be crushed. It is but right to say that these re- 
marks met with sympathy. The four thousand 
people that sat before me showed every sign of 
feeling; they rose from their seats, they clapped 
their hands, they stamped their feet, they shouted. 
The four years have passed, and the Republic is 
not gone, thank God, but stands out in grander 
proportions, is established upon a firmer founda- 
tion than ever before. In the four days that have 
passed since the shot that laid Abraham Lincoln 
low, the work of fifty years in the consolidation of 
the Republic has been done. The morning of the 
same day that saw one President die, saw another 
quietly inaugurated and as quietly performing his 
functions. True, there were a few men in Wall 
street who seemed to look upon it as the harbinger 
of a golden harvest ; men who, if allowed by any 
chance to pass the gates of the Celestial City, would 
go with their eyes bent downward studying some 

plan to pluck up the golden pavement. Naturally 

4 



26 



enough, these men mistook the mighty import of 
passing events, and bought gold for a rise. On Mon- 
day gold was ten per cent, lower than on Saturday. 

Another lesson we have learned is this : that in our 
government no one man is essential. The Harpers 
have just published a book by Louis Napoleon Bo- 
naparte on the Life of Julius Caesar. Its object is to 
teach the world that it must be governed by its great 
men ; that they make epochs and not merely mark 
them. How suddenly that book has been refuted, 
and what a blow has been given to this gospel of 
Napoleon, by the assassination of Lincoln and its 
issues. Here is one greater than Caesar struck 
down as Caesar was, and yet the pillars of the Re- 
public are unshaken. What a pitiful anachronism 
does the Imperial plea for Caesarism appear, in 
presence of the dead Lincoln, and the mourning, 
yet living and triumphant Republic! 

Let us now gather one or two practical lessons 
for ourselves and our children. Hatred of assassin- 
ation is one of these lessons, if, indeed, we needed 
to learn it. The work that Brutus did to Caesar 
was just as bad a work as that of Booth to Lincoln. 
It was centuries before humanity recovered from 



27 

the poisoned wound it received from the stroke of 
the dagger that pierced the breast of Caesar. Teach 
your children, moreover, not only to hate assassina- 
tion, but treason as well ; for treason breeds assas- 
sins, as it breeds all other forms of crime and wrong. 
You cannot be too severe upon it in your thoughts 
or in your talk; you are severe upon the robber and 
the assassin; shall you be lenient toward the treason 
which has begotten both robbery and assassination ? 
Remember, too, that as treason is the parent of 
assassination, so slavery has been the parent of 
treason. Is it necessary for me to exhort you to 
teach your children to hate slavery too? In this one 
thing I ask you to join with me this day. Let us 
bow ourselves before Almighty God, and vow that 
so far as in us lies, none of us will ever agree to 
any pacification of this land, until slavery be utterly 
extirpated. Watch your editors, then ; watch your 
clergy ; watch your generals and soldiers, your ad- 
mirals and sailors ; watch even Andrew Johnson, 
though of that I apprehend there will be no need. 
Watch them all, if need be, and see to it that this 
sprout of hell never shoots up again in the Ameri- 
can soil. 



28 

One more lesson, and not the least. If anything 
I have said, or anything that you read or hear in 
these sad days, breeds within you a single revenge- I 
ful feeling, even towards the leaders of this rebellion, 
then think of Abraham Lincoln, and pray God to 
make you merciful. Think of the prayer of 
Christ, which the President said, after his Saviour, 
" Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
do." Let there be no place for revenge in our 
souls; justice we may and must demand, but re- 
venge, never. " Vengeance is mine, I will repay, 
saith the Lord." I counsel you also to discounte- 
nance all disorder, all attempts by private persons 
to avenge the publie wrong, or even to punish sym- 
pathizers with treason. I have been sorry to hear 
from the lips of generous young men, under the 
pangs of the President's assassination, sentiments 
of bitterness and indignation, amounting almost to 
fierceness. It is natural, no doubt, but what is 
natural is not always right. Indulge this spirit, 
and you may hear next that this man's house or 
that man's should be mobbed. Mobs are alien to 
our northern soil ; they belong to another atmos- 
phere than that of free schools and free men. The 



29 

region of slavery was their natural home ; let us 
have none of them. And soon, when the last 
shackles shall have fallen, and throughout our land, 
from sea to sea, there shall be no master and no 
slave, the blessed Peace shall come, for which we 
have looked, and prayed, and fought so long, when 
the Republic shall be established upon the eternal 
foundations of Freedom and Justice, to stand, we 
trust, by the blessing of God, down to the last 
syllable of recorded Time. 



30 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL. 

" Fellow Countrymen : 

At this second appearing to take the oath of the 
Presidential office, there is less occasion for an 
extended address than there was at the first. Then 
a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be 
pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at 
the expiration of four years, during which public 
declarations have been constantly called forth on 
every point and phase of the great contest which 
still absorbs the attention and engrosses the ener- 
gies of the nation, little that is new could be pre- 
sented. 

The progress of our arms, upon which all else 
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as 
to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory 
and encouraging to all. With high hopes for the 
future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im- 
pending civil war. All dreaded it ; all sought to 
avoid it. While the inaugural address was being 
delivered from this place, devoted altogether to 



31 
saving the Union without war, insurgent agents 
were in the city seeking to destroy it without war 
— seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the ef- 
fects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, 
but one of them would make war rather than let the 
nation survive, and the other would accept war 
rather than let it perish, and the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, 
but localized in the Southern part of it. These 
slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. 
All knew that this interest was somehow the cause 
of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend 
this interest, was the object for which the insurgents 
would rend the Union even by war, while the gov- 
ernment claimed no right to do more than to restrict 
the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magni- 
tude or the duration which it has already attained. 
Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict 
might cease with, or even before the conflict itself 
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
and a result less fundamental and astounding. 

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same 



32 

Godj and each invokes His aid against the other. 
It may seem strange than any men should dare to 
ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread 
from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us 
judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of 
both could not be answered. That of neither has 
been answered fully. The Almighty has his own 
purposes. " Woe unto the world because of of- 
fences, for it must needs be that offences come ; 
but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
of these offences, which in the providence of God 
must needs come, but which having continued 
through His appointed time. He now wills to 
remove, and that he gives to both North and 
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by 
whom the offence came, shall we discern therein 
any departure from those divine attributes which 
the believers in a living God always ascribe to 
Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass 
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all 
the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk. 



33 

and until every drop of blood drawn with the lasn 
shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago; so, still it 
must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see 
the right, let us strive on to finish the work, we are 
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him 
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves 
and with all nations." 

5 



34 



THE SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG. 

" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposi- 
tion that all men are created equal. Now we are en- 
gaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, 
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long 
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that 
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that 
field as a final resting-place for those who here gave 
their lives that that nation might live. It is alto- 
gether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, 
have consecrated it far above our power to add or 
detract. The world will little note, nor long re- 
member, what we say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather 
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to 
the great task remaining before us, that from these 



35 

honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
devotion ; that we here highly refolve that thefe 
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and 
that government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 




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